Is How You Start As A Country Where You Are Destined To Remain?

I am beginning to wonder if how you start is how you will remain when it comes to the building of a nation, in terms of its core values, ideologies, and human rights? I ask this question, because although we claim that a lot has changed since the discovery of this land mass, its subsequent colonisation and the actual formation of the country of Canada, a lot has remained the same and in Canada’s case this is not a good thing. I keep getting the feeling in this country that those of us not of European heritage are being tolerated and that we should be grateful for being allowed to come here in the first place. The feeling I get is that anyone who does not share the religion, culture and view on what is and has always been a European sense of entitlement and superiority over all others in all things then, or “Canadian values,” does not belong in Canada and should perhaps not come here to live, or visit.

I have listened to Steven Harper and the members of the Conservative Party of Canada talk about real Canadians, what our values are and who they consider are good candidates to immigrate to Canada and I say to myself, “Nothing has changed since the first European set foot on this country and decided that if the First Nations people they found here wished to be allowed to remain that they would have to change and stop being who they were.” The colonising Europeans did this forcing the First Nations to, change their religion(The Gods that they prayed to and adopt the European God), their culture and their lifestyle (How they dressed, what they ate and how they hunted, and finally the way they governedthemselves getting First Nations to enter into treaties that were supposed to see a sharing of the land as nation to nation for certain considerations; of course we know through history that government after government has failed to live up to their obligations and promises to the First Nations people while insisting that the First Nations to uphold their end of all agreements and treaties unilaterally. What I am getting at is that Canada from the very beginning was founded by a group of Europeans who thought and maintained the ideology that they were superior to all others racially, culturally, mentally and religiously then any other people on the planet and went as far as to deem other human beings somewhere between the ape and a human on and evolutionary scale; a convenient way to justify taking all that belonged to them, rationalizing colonization to be a favor done for First Nations rather than the injustice it was.

Canadian governance did not stop there though, it could not stop its racist ways of the colonisation process from spreading into its immigration system. Why I say this is because when we needed special skill, or a cheap work force Canadian politicians had no problem bringing into Canada who we felt were beneath us and expendable, like the Chinese by the thousands to do the dangerous work on things like blasting a railway line through the Canadian Rockies, but when the railway line was built they were deported and laws were enacted to see that their immigration to Canada would be kept at a very low number. One Canadian politician called for a law that would ensure that Canada’s, European ethnicity, religion and culture which was then the majority of the population of Canada be safe guarded from those prolific Chinese breeders that if left unchecked would overrun Canada. A person only has to listen to the immigration policies being made into law by Steven Harper and Jason Kenney and it becomes obvious that we have regressed back to this time period in our history. Christianity is being touted as the religion of Canada and the moral guide line to be followed by persons trying to immigrate here, or even visit this country, even though we have laws that say all religions are to be seen as having equal status under the law and that religious freedom and equality is the law in this country. How immigrants and people dress, what religion they follow and their individual cultural customs are once again coming under attack by the Canadian government and discouraged and instead of talking equality we have back slid into reasonable accommodation. As governments of Canada give in one after another and say no to Hijabs for Muslim Women in government buildings, offices, schools etc., no turbans for Sikhs in sports, I wonder are Canadian’s capable of the change necessary to say no to a racist backward sliding government.

The Canadian government under the leadership of Stephen Harper in my opinion is guilty of erasing whatever little progress this country has made in trying to atone for its racist past and their sense of entitlement and superiority in terms of the immigrants we used and then expelled from this country, by now saying that when immigrating to Canada, or merely visiting Canada, immigrants must now drop their religious beliefs and cultural habits at the customs and not even ask nor expect a reasonable accommodation, even if it is within our power to grant without undo hardship.

I think that when giving 5 visiting male travellers, who happen to be Hindu priests, called sadhu who made a request to CBSA to be screened by males only because their strict lifestyle requires them to avoid any contact with women, becomes a problem and a political football, responsible for national news headline coverage, it stands to prove just how far we have digressed in terms of our willingness to not only see all religions as equal, treat them as equal, or even be willing to make reasonable accommodation for. What harm did it do to accommodate these individuals to national security, or in any other way?

Did the female customs agent really have a reason to be insulted as she claimed, or was she looking to cause a scene and get her 15 minutes of fame?

Was this female customs agent truly concerned with a sense of fairness for all travelers crossing our borders, or were her own prejudices bubbling out and into the light of day through the cracks in her self-righteous veneer?

Since the 5 were checked out in all of the same ways using all of the same techniques and procedures as they would have if the female agent would have used, exactly what risk to Canada and Canadians was risked by making the religious accommodation to these 5 visiting Hindu priests called sadhus, or is a slight inconvenience now consider a threat?

I remember once as a mover I was sent with a lady packer to unpack a group of people who had just moved into a community in the |Laurentian Mountains. My company was not familiar with the rules of men being in the presence of women for hermetic Jews. When we arrived to move in and unpack some boxes the lady was told that she could not enter into the house or touch any of the contents inside the boxes, because of the laws governing their religion. Now I guess we could have refused to work under those conditions since it would mean that I would have to do most of the work, but I did not; what I did do was ask that the men help in the unloading of the truck and any unpacking that they wanted done, so that we could be finished by sundown which was another of their religious concerns. We all cooperated and it all got done. I guess the company could have refused and started worrying about how often this would happen and thinking up all kinds of doomsday scenarios and I guess the lady packer could have claimed to be offended, but we did not make a mountain out of a mole hill we just did our job without insulting anyone and everyone was happier for it.

That these 5 visiting Hindu priests called sadhus were compared to visiting white supremacists, by this lady customs agent, representatives of her union and even mentioned in statements by the Conservative Government of Canada, I think that it becomes clear that Canada under Stephen Harper we have become a small-minded people once again with misguided views of ourselves as superior to all others from a cultural, ethnic and religious perspective, believing that only our values and rights are in need of protecting and need to be protected. What a sad day for Canada and all Canadians to have stooped to this new low to beheaded in the opposite direction of human rights and freedoms for everyone regardless of ethnicity, culture, or religion. it seems that Canada is destined to remain where we started as we revisit a time in our history in which we operated from a European sense of entitlement and superiority over all others in all things.

Interesting note: In a debate I listened to titled, “Can Israel Exist as both Jewish and Democratic?,” the debaters being

Mira Sucharov, Professor of Political Science at Carleton University and journalist and author, Max Blumenthal, that Mira Sucharov gave Canada’s treatment of it First Nations and Canada’s immigration policies throughout history and to this very day to justify a democratic country’s right to be a little racist. Mira Sucharov stated several times that Israel’s policies are a little racist, but because they are driven by a need to keep the core of Israel’s democracy a Jewish majority things like:

The deportation of African refugees back to their original countries where they faced certain death as acceptable.

The fact that only Jews can immigrate to Israel.

The fact that the state controlled Israeli Rabbis have been ordered by the government to accept no Palestinian, or arabic conversions to Judaism.

The fact that only Jews can own land titles.

The fact that Jewish students are taught to fear Palestinians so that they will join the army.

The fact that Israel is a work in progress and has no borders, because it is not finished grabbing land.

Mira Sucharov kept saying Palestine which is now Israel like the Palestinians were a flea on the back of a wolf and kept inferring to Israel’s military might as all that was necessary in the determination of what was right or wrong or the final outcome in the dispute. Through it all it was interesting to note that Mira Sucharov kept referring to the European racist colonization of North America and the great countries of Canada and the USA that arose out of the that racist colonization and practices that are still going on today as comparable to what Israel has done to the Palestinians in the past and is still doing to them today. I have to ask, “What is up Canada?”